Avant Money ordered to pay €8,420 over mortgage switch rebuff to applicant over 70

Avant Money has been ordered to pay more than €8,000 to a man whose broker said he could not apply for a mortgage switch with the financial institution because he was over 70.

A motion by the lender’s solicitor to have an anonymous decision in the man’s equality case was rejected by the Workplace Relations Commission, which did not accept the argument that commercially-sensitive data would be revealed.

The tribunal was told that when the man complained directly to the lender about the refusal, its head of mortgage operations told him its policy “does not extend to offering a mortgage to applicants over 70″ and that was its “final response”.

That was despite the fact that Avant Money’s lending policy at the time did allow for an exception past this age “where repayment capacity can be proven” – a point highlighted in a legal submission by the complainant in the case, Michael Lane, who argued he was denied the opportunity to prove his financial position.

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The tribunal upheld Mr Lane’s complaint of ageist discrimination under the Equal Status Act 2000 against Avantcard DAC, trading as Avant Money, in a decision published on Wednesday.

Along with an order for compensation of €8,420 – half the interest Mr Lane would have saved if he had secured the mortgage he was seeking – the tribunal has also given Avant Money six months to carry out equality training in its complaints department.

The training order extends to senior staff and comes with a further direction to Avant Money to write to its brokers “to clarify the age policy”.

In evidence to a hearing last December, Mr Lane said his broker had been “very clear” with him on March 25th, 2021 that he could not apply for the Avant Money mortgage switching service “because he was over 70 years of age on the date of application”.

He wrote to the lender the same day accusing it of a “breach of the equality legislation”, he said.

The tribunal noted the lender’s reply – signed by its head of mortgage operations – that it was “normal practice” to have a policy on a loan’s maximum term and to set age limits. “Unfortunately, our policy does not extend to offering a mortgage to applicants over 70 years of age,” the department head wrote.

“We have now completed our complaints process, therefore you may treat this letter as out final response to your complaint,” the letter concluded.

The firm’s interim head of compliance, David Caslin, said he had no direct dealings with Mr Lane’s correspondence until the matter was referred to the WRC. He said if Mr Lane had said he would make a WRC complaint “it would have been fully investigated” – and argued the firm was “denied the opportunity to respond”.

Adjudicator Úna Glazier-Farmer noted that the letter from Avant was signed by a “very senior person in the respondent’s business stating that he has reviewed the complaint and provided a reason for his answer”.

The signatory of the letter, Avant Money’s head of mortgage operations, did not attend the hearing to give evidence – and the adjudicating officer wrote that she would not accept “hearsay” from other company witnesses on the department head’s “thought process”.

The lender could not “wash its hands of the broker” when it did not accept applications directly, and had produced no testimony or evidence on its relationship with the broker, the adjudicator wrote.